The Ritchie Boys: The Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned to Fight Hitler
The cruelty of the SS was unlike anything Martin had imagined men could be capable of inflicting. He suspected that guard duty at Dachau was not a choice assignment, and that many of them were ordered there to be trained in brutality for duties in other camps and newly conquered territories. Dachau’s was a hierarchy of violence: the young soldiers were subject to such harsh treatment by their leaders that they were quick to vent their pent-up anger on the inmates. The process reminded Martin of training attack dogs.
One evening at roll call, the camp commandant announced that a prisoner had escaped. As punishment, all inmates would be held at attention in the main yard until the escapee was caught and returned. The long hours of the night crawled by, and it was bitterly cold under the bright spotlights. When the guard shifts changed, the men standing in the assembly area heard the clicking of machine guns in the gun towers—the loaded weapons were being checked.
Martin stood at the end of one row of prisoners. After midnight, exhausted and nearly frozen, he began to drift off to sleep on his feet. He must have swayed, though he was still standing when a rifle butt struck him in midback with painful force. He struggled to keep his balance and not fall.
In the morning, the assembly area was littered with men who had collapsed during the night—as far as Martin could tell, all were dead. The other prisoners were taken away briefly for food and water, then returned to the parade ground. The bodies had been removed.
Everyone remained standing until four that afternoon, when the escapee was returned to camp. Whisked out of sight, he was never seen again.
The man’s death would not have been easy, Martin knew. A favorite torture technique at Dachau had its roots in the medieval Inquisition: a victim was placed underneath a gallowslike structure, hands shackled behind his back, and pulled into the air by ropes attached to his wrists. Weights were added to the victim as he swung to inflict more intense pain on his arms and shoulders. Martin knew of men who had dangled helplessly for up to an hour as punishment for some real or imagined infraction. Most ended up with dislocated or broken bones and joints; some were permanently crippled.
Despite the horror of the consequences, there continued to be escape attempts by desperate men, but they seldom resulted in freedom. Some inmates chose another type of escape. A man would run toward the fence, attracting a hail of bullets from the gun towers. If he made it all the way, he would throw himself against the wire to be electrocuted. The SS guards usually made the quick kill, but not always. One prisoner, shot before reaching the fence, was left on the ground to writhe. His cries lasted all night.
On nights like that, with moans and shrieks sounding in the air and the constant cold biting at his body, Martin did more thinking than sleeping.
The big question was always: Why? As an avid reader with an interest in history—he had hoped to go to college, but when he turned sixteen in 1934, he was told he had received all the schooling to which a Jew was entitled in Germany—he knew about medieval Europe and the Inquisition. What difference was there between the suffering of men four centuries ago—ad majorem Dei gloriam (for the greater glory of God)—and what the Nazis were doing now? Suffering was still suffering. And if there was supposedly only one God, whose was it?
Some inmates at Dachau, like Ernst Dingfelder, were devoutly religious when they arrived. Others became more religious the longer they stayed. And then there were those who found they could no longer believe in God—any God—because of what was taking place. Martin identified with this group. He would, he decided, observe and participate in the traditions and ceremonies he had grown up with, out of a desire to acknowledge his Jewish heritage. But for the rest of his life, he knew, he would just be going through the motions. The horrors of Dachau had destroyed his belief in God.
Prisoners were allowed to write one letter a week, though with Nazi censors reading all outgoing mail, there was little they could say. Martin could not describe the effects of the starvation diet and all the weight he had lost, or the painful, open frostbite sores on his feet that made walking a torment. If the inmates failed to say everything was fine, their letters would not be mailed. Since his letters were the only documentation his family had that he was still alive, Martin wrote dutifully each week. Under the sender’s name was the line: “Concentration Camp Dachau.” The return address included the words Schutzhaft-Jude, or “Jew in Protective Custody.”
On January 1, 1939, Martin turned twenty-one. As he was now of legal age, Uncle Julius was no longer his guardian or trustee of the home his mother had left Martin. How camp officials discovered these facts he never knew, but shortly after his birthday, Martin was summoned to an administrative office and shown a document mostly covered by a blotter. He was told not to attempt to read the paper—only to sign it.
“Was ist das?” he dared to ask.
“Sie haben drei Sekunden.” He had three seconds to sign. “Sonst.” Or else.
He signed, and the paper was taken away. Only then was he told that he had signed a power of attorney allowing his mother’s house to be sold.
Martin Selling knew then that he would not be going home.
PART ONE
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
–STATUE OF LIBERTY INSCRIPTION
by nineteenth-century Jewish poet Emma Lazarus
1
SAVING THE CHILDREN
For nearly twelve years, Günther Stern had the best of childhoods.
He spent those idyllic days in Hildesheim, one of the oldest and most picturesque towns in northern Germany, built along the windswept banks of the Innerste River and surrounded by rolling hills dotted with farms, dairies, and grazing livestock. The town’s cobblestone streets were lined by centuries-old, spire-topped buildings and churches.
Reaching skyward as it climbed up the sides of the Hildesheim Cathedral’s apse was a thirty-five-foot dog rose reputed to be the world’s oldest living rosebush. It was nearly the same age as the town, which is how it got its name: Tausendjähriger Rosenstock (“Thousand-Year Rose”). According to local legend, as the pink-blossomed rose flourished, so did the town.
Since its earliest days, Hildesheim had been the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop, and for centuries the majority of its residents were Catholic. After the Reformation, which had its roots in Germany, many Catholics turned Protestant (mostly Lutheran), and by the 1930s, Hildesheim’s sixty-five thousand inhabitants were divided between the two major Christian religions. There were fewer than a thousand Jews in the town, which mirrored their representation nationally. A June 1933 census found less than one percent of Germany’s population was Jewish: roughly a half million Jews out of 67 million people.
When Jews settled in Hildesheim early in the seventeenth century, they built half-timbered houses with ornate wood-carved façades. The town’s Moorish-style synagogue was built on Lappenberg Street in 1849, an area that became one of Hildesheim’s most scenic neighborhoods.
Günther was a bright and inquisitive boy. He had his mother’s sunny disposition, his father’s intelligent eyes, and unruly ears that refused to lay flat. Born in 1922, he made his first visit to synagogue at age six, when his parents took him for services on a High Holiday. For once, the boy hadn’t complained about being dressed in his best clothes. His mother had told him how important it was to make a good first impression on the Lord. They walked with other families to the synagogue, all dressed in their finest. Smiling passersby stepped aside, nodding to the Jewish procession as it passed, the men lifting their top hats in greeting, again and again.
Günther, the eldest child of Julius and Hedwig Stern, was four years older than his brother, Werner, and twelve years older than his sister, Eleonore. The family was solidly middle class, as were most of Hildesheim’s Jews. The Sterns lived in a rented apartment abutting Günther’s father’s small fabric store, which was located on the third floor of a well-maintained building near a bustling marketplace in the center of town. The apartment had high ceilings and good light. Fine curtains draped the tall windows. Each room had a wood-burning stove for heat, and the kitchen was outfitted with a modern stove.
The two boys shared a room on one side of the apartment. Their parents’ bedroom, where their little sister also slept, was at the other end. The bedrooms had hardwood floors; the carpeted living room had a sofa, two upholstered chairs, and Julius’s dark wood desk. The formal dining room, with a pastoral landscape by the Austrian artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller on the wall, was reserved for special occasions. Günther and his brother’s favorite part of the house was a tile-floored vestibule that served as an indoor playground, complete with a Ping-Pong table that they put to regular use.
Günther’s father was a slight man known for his boundless energy. Julius Stern worked six-and-a-half-day weeks, taking off only Saturday mornings to attend synagogue, where the sermon was in German and the service in Hebrew. He showed fabric samples and took orders in his store and on trips to outlying villages, where he called on customers who made their own clothing. The only ready-to-wear clothes he sold were men’s gabardine overcoats. His wife, Hedwig (née Silberberg), did his typing and billing. A raven-haired woman with dark, soulful eyes, Hedwig had a gift for writing witty limericks featuring relatives and friends.
Günther began his education in a one-room Jewish school. His teacher met the challenge of keeping students of varying ages and grade levels interested and engaged throughout the school day. None of it was lost on Günther, and he blossomed as a serious reader and an excellent student. Günther also enjoyed attending a Saturday afternoon youth group conducted by the synagogue’s charismatic young cantor, Josef Cysner, who led lively discussions about Jewish books and culture.
As was customary, Günther entered Andreas-Oberrealschule at age ten, in 1932. He was one of three Jews among his incoming class of twenty students. Even before starting school, Günther had had many non-Jewish friends; in Hildesheim at the time, young gentiles and Jews easily assimilated. They visited one another’s homes, attended the same parties, bicycled and swam together, and played soccer in the same athletic clubs.
But in 1933, the Nazis came into power, and they immediately started passing restrictive new laws targeting Jews. Hitler pledged to transform the nation: “Give me ten years,” he promised prophetically that year, “and you won’t recognize Germany.”
On April 1, 1933, two months after Hitler became chancellor, the government called for a twenty-four-hour nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. Storm troopers stood in front of stores, denouncing the proprietors and blocking the entrances. Jude was smeared on store windows; stars of David were painted across doorways. Local boycotts of Jewish businesses spread throughout Germany. Nazis marched through the streets, shouting anti-Jewish slurs; oftentimes these processions were accompanied by arrests, beatings, and extensive property damage.
Like many Jewish proprietors, Julius gradually lost most of his non-Jewish customers. They were afraid to be seen coming and going from his store; when he went to call on them at their homes, he was greeted by signs that read: JUDEN IST DER EINTRITT VERBOTEN. (Jews are forbidden entry.)
At the time, Günther, though an inveterate newspaper reader, had only a partial understanding of what was taking place in Germany. But he noticed when his friends became slow to greet him and then stopped speaking to him altogether. He found himself being invited to fewer birthday parties, and he was soon banned—along with the other Jewish youth of Hildesheim—from swimming at the local pool and playing on his soccer team. Even his athletic club eventually kicked him out; though he had accumulated enough participation points to earn a medal, he was not awarded it. These were formative years for Günther, and it hurt him deeply to realize he had become an outcast among his peers. The rupture in his young life was unexpected and wrenching.
At school, many of the teachers were replaced by newer instructors, from Berlin and elsewhere, who wore swastika pins and espoused Nazi propaganda. While a few of the older teachers showed empathy toward their Jewish students, they had to be careful for fear of being reported and losing their jobs.
For a time, Günther had a protector: Heinrich Hennis, a bright boy who was a year older and a head taller. More than once, Heinrich jumped between Günther and his tormentors. But all the non-Jewish boys were required to join a Nazi youth organization, and Heinrich was no exception. His leader singled him out for special indoctrination, perhaps because word had gotten around that he was protecting Jews. Eventually, Heinrich also stopped speaking to Günther. Soon, Nazi slogans spouted from the lips of this former friend.
Choir had always been one of Günther’s favorite classes. A few years earlier, his parents had taken him to the world-famous Hanover opera house for a performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin. Ever since, he’d enjoyed music and choral singing. But one afternoon after the Nazis came to power, the choir teacher had the students rise to sing “Deutsche Jugend heraus!” Written a few years after Germany’s defeat in World War I, the song’s lyrics were violent and provoking: “German youth, gather! Slay our enemy in his own backyard, down him in earnest encounters.” Embraced by Hitler Youth organizations for its rousing nationalism, the song had been included in a 1933 songbook released by a pro-Nazi publisher.
It was Günther’s old friend, Heinrich Hennis, who indignantly shouted to the teacher: “How can you let Jews sing a song about German youth?”
The choir teacher stopped and said apologetically, “Our Jewish students will sit this one out.” Günther and the two other Jewish students sat down and remained silent as the class sang. Mortified and angered at the same time, Günther realized the Nazis had found a way to take even music from him.
Throughout 1933, Günther watched as German and European history was literally rewritten. One day, his history teacher came into the classroom and passed out single-edge razor blades. “Take out your textbooks,” he ordered the class, and he began writing page numbers on the blackboard. The students were to cut out the listed pages from their books and replace them with new pages. “Be sure to leave enough room on the margins,” he added helpfully, “so you can paste the new pages into the book.”
Excited murmurs rose up at this unusual assignment. When a razor blade reached Günther, he did as instructed. A few pages into the cutting, he began to read the passages, and realized with a jolt that the pages being taken out of the books all dealt with major accomplishments by Jews.
As the non-Jewish students were subjected to more and more anti-Semitic propaganda, at school and at home, they became increasingly hateful and aggressive toward their Jewish classmates. One day after school, Günther was cornered and beaten up by five boys from his school who took turns striking him as the others held him down. He limped home, bruised and battered physically as well as emotionally.
Nor was his family spared such violence. One night, his father worked late, and he took some letters to a mailbox a block away. On his way home in the dark, he was jumped by several men spewing anti-Semitic curses. They hit and kicked him. A sympathetic policeman passing by found Julius crumpled on the ground and took him to a hospital for first aid. When Günther saw his father the next morning, his father’s face was covered with cuts and bruises.
As the violence and hatred mounted around them, Julius and Hedwig Stern decided it was time to get the family out of Germany. They began writing to Jewish organizations, seeking information about emigrating to America.
A serious impediment for the Sterns and other Jews wanting to leave Germany was a new law passed by the Nazis, which restricted the transfer of cash, bonds, or other assets out of the country. Previously, Germans had been permitted to take out up to the equivalent of ten thousand dollars, but the Nazis reduced this amount, initially to four thousand dollars. As their campaign to plunder Jewish property and assets expanded, the amount was reduced further still, to ten Reichmarks, which was then worth about four U.S. dollars. The criminal penalties for exceeding this amount were stiff, including imprisonment and forfeiture of property.
At the same time, the U.S. State Department was diligently following a special order, issued by President Herbert Hoover in 1930, that required visa applicants to show they would not become public charges at any time, even long after their arrival. If they lacked the immediate means to support themselves, an affidavit was required from someone in America guaranteeing they would not end up on the public dole. The public-charge mandate and the various machinations one had to go through to prove financial independence—something not required of earlier immigrants to America’s shores—reduced the number of aliens admitted from 241,700 in 1930 to just 35,576 in 1932, and became a major impediment to anyone wanting to immigrate to the United States.
Desperate to escape from the Nazis, the Sterns wrote to Hedwig’s older brother, Benno Silberberg, who had moved to America in the 1920s and become a baker in St. Louis. Would he sign an affidavit for the family to come to America? they asked. It was not clear that Benno would be able to help them, but he was their only relative in America.
By spring 1937, school had become so fraught with anguish, anxiety, and actual danger that Günther’s mother and father pulled him out of all his classes. Instead, they hired a tutor to improve his English for their planned move to America. Those easy, bright years of Günther’s in German schools—from the one-room Jewish school where his curiosity was first awakened to the courses, choir, and sports he enjoyed in the public high school—were over. In their place? The sixty-year-old tutor, a graying, stooped, emaciated-looking gentile named Herr Tittel. Beginnning in the mid-1920s, he’d worked as a teacher at a Brooklyn orphanage. But after eleven years, he grew homesick and returned to his hometown of Hildesheim, where he eked out a living teaching English, mostly to Jews hoping to emigrate.
Günther grew to like Herr Tittel, who told him colorful stories about America during their weekly lessons. While living in the U.S., Herr Tittel had become a fan of professional baseball, and he wove grand narrative descriptions for the young Günther, extolling Grover Cleveland Alexander’s masterful pitching and Babe Ruth’s epic home runs. Herr Tittel was easygoing and somewhat eccentric, and would frequently start humming popular American tunes in the middle of lessons. Within a few months, Günther had learned more conversational English—albeit in peculiar German-accented Brooklynese—than he had in three years with his high school teacher.
That summer, Günther’s parents gave him permission to join three friends from his Jewish youth group on a monthlong bicycle trip to the Rhine, a six-hundred-mile round trip. His parents, certain the family would soon be leaving Germany, thought this might be their older son’s last chance to explore the geography of his ancestral country. Once they left Nazi Germany, Hedwig and Julius agreed, none of them would ever want to return.
The boys asked their youth leader to write a letter vouching for their character and wrote to Jewish community leaders in towns along their planned route to find places to spend the night. For most of the trip, families put them up, though in one town the best they could do was sleep on benches in the dressing room of the local Jewish soccer team. All three boys were good bicyclists, and they covered twenty-five to thirty-five miles a day.
In a sleepy river town, they pedaled along the riverside, watching people in canoes and paddleboats enjoying a day on the water. A short distance away, they saw a different scene: a line of docked military boats with heavy guns mounted on their decks. Their steel hulls shone, glinting in the sun; they looked newly built and ominous. Each vessel flew a Nazi battle flag with a swastika. These were unlike any boats the boys had ever seen. It was clear to them now: under Hitler, Germany was getting ready for war.
Günther had been home only a few hours when his parents called him into the formal dining room for a talk. The family never used this room unless they had company, so Günther knew this conversation was serious.
They had heard from Uncle Benno, Julius told his son. He explained to Günther that America was deep in a Depression, which meant that millions of people were out of work. The U.S. government required an affidavit of financial support for immigrants such as themselves, who had to leave their country with no money. But Uncle Benno had lost his full-time job and was picking up only part-time work, which meant he didn’t have the resources necessary to sign an affidavit for an immigrating family of five.
Günther’s father spread out a serious-looking document, several pages in length, on the table.
All this time, his mother had remained silent. Now at last she spoke up, her voice low and solemn. “Uncle Benno’s affidavit has come through for you alone,” she said, explaining that Günther would live with Uncle Benno and Aunt Ethel in St. Louis until the rest of the family could join him. “You have an appointment at the American consulate in Hamburg in a few weeks,” she added softly.
“Mutti, I am going alone to America?” asked a shocked Günther. He could not believe what he was hearing.
“Ja, Günther.”
Since Uncle Benno had been able to provide an affidavit for only one person, she explained, it had to be Günther. Neither she nor his father would go without the other; at nearly sixteen, Günther was the oldest of the children. They would keep trying to find a sponsor for the rest of the family and hoped to all reunite in America soon.
It was obvious to Günther that his mother was struggling with this decision as much as he was. He had never pictured this day, and she had never fathomed sending her teenage son away to a foreign country alone.
Perhaps once he got settled in the United States, she suggested, Günther could find someone there to help them. She said this was a serious, grown-up assignment to give him, but she and his father believed he was mature enough to handle it. Most important to her and his father, his mother said, was that Günther would be safe in America.
His father, always the practical businessman, began to describe the logistics of Günther’s trip to Hamburg, one hundred miles north of Hildesheim. He had already worked out a ride for him with a Jewish family who had an appointment at the consulate the day before Günther’s. After what would be the longest automobile ride of his life, Günther would spend the night at a students’ pension, then return home the next day with the local family.